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Undertaking Advocacy
WaterAid has produced ‘The Advocacy Sourcebook’, a guide to advocacy work in the water and sanitation sector, which has outlined basic strategies for any advocacy work. It highlights the importance of planning any advocacy work and outlines the steps to be considered before undertaking advocacy projects:
- Identifying the Issues: what do you want to change?
- Finding out more through analysis: analysing the issue; analysing the context and key actors; understanding the time frame
- Setting objectives, which should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound (SMART)
- Identifying the targets: who do you want to influence?
- Identifying allies: who can work with you?
- Defining the message: a summary of the change you want to bring about and by when
- Choosing approaches and activities: for example, collaboration, complementary activities, direct opposition and/or indirect, generalised campaigning (source:Chapman and Fisher, 1999).
- Selecting appropriate tools.Some of the most common tools used in advocacy are as follows:
| Lobbying |
Media:television, radio, press |
| Meetings |
Posters, leaflets and new sheets |
| Negotiation |
Audio cassettes |
| Proyect |
Videos, slides |
| Visits/demonstrations |
Email/internet |
| Reports |
Drama, Theatre |
| Letter writting |
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- Assessing what resources are needed: the need for a realistic budget
- Planning for monitoring and evaluation: for example, developing indicators to assess the impact of an advocacy project
- Drawing up an action plan.
The Advocacy Sourcebook, which contains more detailed descriptions of each of these steps can be found by clicking here.
Ideas for community advocacy can be found in the Community Action section.
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